


Who Fears Not Night and Death

by raspberryhunter



Category: Die Zauberflöte | The Magic Flute - Mozart/Schikaneder
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Love, Parent-Child Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roses always have thorns, but still Pamina chooses the roses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Fears Not Night and Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



> Many thanks to my betas, greenlily and sprocket!

Pamina remembered her mother as the blazing swiftness of falling stars, the piercing strangeness of her mother's magic. Here are the things she had from her mother: the high songs of magic that soared over those she ruled; the love of the wildness about the palace, the stark rocks and the hills with their riotous flowers and trees; the sensitivity to know of the glimpses she saw, sometimes, within her mind --

She remembered being a small girl in the days when her father was ill, the hushed staccato twittering of her mother's ladies as they fluttered anxiously about. And she remembered the night she heard her mother's voice, its strong melodic lines raised in some intense emotion. She peered out from round a corner, eyes wide, as her mother the Queen stormed from her father's room and stalked down the great stairs of the palace.

Pamina held completely still for a moment. Then she tiptoed from where she watched and made her way to her father's study. She could not, later, say why she had done this, except that she was compelled by curiosity and the memory of her father's playing. She softly opened his desk drawer to reveal the flute within, the golden wood polished to such a high sheen that it almost seemed to glow. She lifted it, brought it to her lips, and blew.

It made a shrill, discordant noise, not at all like the sounds Father made. She jumped, alarmed.

And thunder sounded, and a whirlwind blew within the room, and she had just time to lay the flute back in the drawer and slam it shut before her mother was before her, beautiful and terrible, saying in her carefully modulated tones: "Pamina. Were you playing the flute?"

"No," Pamina stammered, "I — it was — "

Her mother could use her voice to cut like a whip. "Pamina! Do not lie to me. Never lie."

"I did. I played it," whispered Pamina, her eyes filling with tears. 

The Queen turned away from her. "Mother — " Pamina tried to catch hold of her hand.

Her mother folded her arms and snapped, "You and I may wield the songs of power, but not the magic of the flute." And at her words, Pamina saw and heard, though dimly and far-off, the shadow of a young man playing a ghostly flute, with three small boys around him.

She must have made some sound, must have shown something of what she heard in her face, for her mother made a swift movement, breaking into what she saw and heard. The Queen looked at her daughter, an instant of understanding flashing between them. "Ah. You see it, then."

Pamina willed for the moment to last: "Yes. But what am I seeing? Who is the man — who are the boys?"

"The man I do not yet know." Her mother flung herself into a chair, closed her eyes, passed a hand over her brow. "There are three spirits," Mother said. Her voice was both angry and exhausted, and Pamina longed to be able to comfort her. "They take the shape of boys: young and fair to look upon, but wise beyond their seeming years." The Queen's voice hardened, and she said fiercely, "And in time of need, when Love itself has betrayed you, the spirits will come to you. As you have spoken honestly, so will you hear them speak to you. They will show you what you must choose between."

Love was then a distant concept for Pamina, except that she knew without question that her mother loved her, as she loved her mother, and so she accepted without question what her mother the Queen said. She dared to creep close to her mother, and her mother's hand came up to caress her hair.

Pamina did not think to ask, then, how Love had betrayed her mother. And it was not until much later that she found herself wondering: what did her mother hear? 

What did her mother choose? 

* 

She wandered, miserable, her mother and Tamino both bruised portions of her head that she dared not think about too much. From time to time she would glance at the dagger in her hands. 

If Tamino had not turned from her — if the new life and the old had not both rejected her — 

_Forever destroyed be all ties of nature!_ Her mother's song of power rang in her head. She flinched again from the memory. Because she would not do what her mother asked, because she could not do it. 

She turned the dagger in her hands over and over, watching the watery pre-dawn light reflect off the blade.

Here was something she could do.

She raised the glittering metal high, angling it to pierce her breast --

"Stop, unhappy one!" she heard, several small voices behind her.

She paused, looked to see from where the voices had come. She saw three small boys, dressed in white, running up to her. The air around them shimmered faintly.

"You —" Pamina started. She held perfectly still, the dagger's blade balanced in the air. Then, more slowly: "You are the three boys of whom my mother spoke."

"We are," they said together in their silvery voices. "Do not do this. Your beloved would die of grief were he to see this; he loves only you."

She shook her head, unbelieving, saying with anguish, "But why did Tamino then turn from me? Why would he not speak to me?"

They crowded up to her. "We cannot tell you this. We may only say: turn from despair. Sing with us, and we will show you how he has surrendered his heart to you."

"But my mother — If you cannot tell me — How do I know you speak the truth?" Her mother's words -- _Mother!_ she wailed inside herself. _Had you been with me, I could endure all, even — even_ his _betrayal._ She could not trust her mother's love; could she trust anything else in the world? Could she trust again at all?

The boys looked at her with something like compassion in their faces. "How can we answer that? Only do not do this thing, and share your songs with us. Come with us, and you will see him."

Pamina thought: they could not stop me, if I made the decision to die. In this Mother spoke truly: I have a choice. Sarastro never gave me a choice, and Mother gave me a choice that was no choice at all.

If Tamino turned from her once more, she knew her heart would break forever. Better, surely, for her heart to perish by steel than by love.

And who would she be, if her mother were gone from her, and perhaps Tamino too?

"You will be yourself," the three voices said to her, like the chiming of tiny bells. "You will have love. This we may say to you."

She believed them. She did not want to believe them.

It would be so easy, Pamina thought, to give up. She would never have to fear life and light again.

To hope again would hurt. To go on would be pain.

She stared at the boys for a long moment.

And she let her hand fall. _Take me to him. I would like to see him._ She opened her mouth, at first tentatively, but then relaxing into the melody flowing out from her throat. She and the boys sang together, their voices in harmony under hers giving new shape to the songs she had learned as a child, a new meaning aside from the power and strength she knew. As they sang, one of the boys gently took the dagger from her.

*

Pamina remembered her father as the stillness of sun on leaves, as the silence between beats of a melody. She learned from him the difference between these things: the tranquility that circled her with love when she darted up to embrace him; the quietness that met her mother like a wall; the hush into which his flute played its enchanted music.

She remembered the day he had walked in the overgrown rose-gardens about the Queen's castle. The roses ran wild and unchecked, and he emerged scratched and bleeding from the thorns.

"Father," she said later, as he was putting her to bed, "why do you walk among the roses, when they hurt you so?"

He smiled at her. "It reminds me of my home," he said. He looked around for paper, drew a piece towards him, sketched quickly. "Look: here is the Mountain of Fire, and here the Mountain of Water, and here the labyrinth between the two, where roses bloom as in your mother's garden."

She watched his fingers as the pencil dashed across the page, then frowned, refusing to let him distract her from his first words. "But this is your home, with Mother and me." She was afraid, then, watching his eyes as they focused on something far away, the same fear she felt sometimes when her parents quarreled, when Mother's powerful songs were answered with Father's silence.

"Dear Pamina." He put a warm hand on her shoulder. "I will not leave you, not while I have any say in the matter." 

"And Mother," Pamina prompted anxiously.

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, with difficulty, "If — if I ever must leave you, I would have you know -- Sarastro."

She cocked her head at him inquisitively, while part of her worried at what he had said. But he had said he would not leave her — but the lines of anxiety on his face alarmed her.

He said quietly, "We were boyhood friends, close as brothers. Now he is High Priest, Lord in the Temple of the Sun, the deepness at the heart of the world. And I…" He looked past her, into memory. "I have not seen him since I attempted my initiation — you must know, Pamina, there are things he does not understand, did not understand when I made the magic flute with your mother — well. It was all years ago, and many things were different then." His gaze came back to her. "But I would have you know the Sun as well as the Stars, and if I am no longer able…" He trailed off. "Follow Sarastro as best you can, when you meet him, because I ask it; and he will love you as well for my sake. Promise me, Pamina."

"I promise," she said recklessly, not knowing what she promised, but knowing that it would ease him, and she smiled at him as she saw the lines on his face smooth out at her words.

After her father's death, Sarastro took her, bound her and carried her away to the temple while all of her mother's palace slept a magical sleep. "Here," Sarastro said, with a calm certainty that was like a great pillar, "we strive to learn of Love and Wisdom."

"Lord," she answered quietly, head bowed, "I do not know that I will learn those here." She did not say: I love my mother; and my father was wise, though you did not know it.

"I would hope for it," said Sarastro gently, so gently that she could not help looking up at him; for a moment he had almost sounded like her father. He reached out a hand, as if to touch her shoulder, but he did not. And in his face she saw the grief for her father that she knew was mirrored in her own. 

Still she was angry at him, she was bitterly unhappy for her mother's sake. One who knew of Love and Wisdom, she said inside her head, would not have stolen me away like a thief from my mother.

But she could not hate him, for the grief in his face and for her promise. And she always spoke the truth to him: her mother had taught her that.

*

She saw Tamino while she was yet far off. He stood at the gates of the Mountain of Fire and the Mountain of Water, flanked by the guardians of the gates, his chin jutting at a stubborn angle that she recognized even after this short time of knowing him. He put his hand on the gate to enter, and she saw that alone, without a guide, he would surely lose himself.

"Stop, Tamino!" Pamina called. If Tamino turned away from her again — if the boys had indeed been false — 

He startled, turning towards her, and the look of incredulous joy on his face when he saw her was everything she had hoped for. He closed his eyes, as if he were thinking; then he opened them again, saying loudly, pointedly: "I am allowed to speak to her?"

She listened and thought, as she had learned from her father. And then she understood. Understood that he had been told not to speak with her, as some sort of incomprehensible trial; that he bitterly regretted it; that he asked in her presence so that she could know the truth.

The two guards assented. Tamino kept his eyes on her as she made her way to them. He said severely, his voice pitched so she could hear, "Such a woman, unafraid of darkness and death, is worthy to be consecrated."

From this she knew also that now she had come back to him, he would not disobey the initiates if it were possible, but he would put her need to know first. That he had learned that he must put her first. That he would not see her parted from him again; that he would share all with her.

By this time she had come to him. _Tamino, my Tamino._ His eyes rose to hers, searching, as he said her name in turn. He did not say, _I am sorry_ , but his eyes said it for him. _I forgive you_ , she did not say, but she knew he heard.

She understood, finally, the words the boys had spoken to her, the substance of the truth in Tamino's silence. That Tamino loved her; that he always had, though he had not known how not to hurt her. "Let love strew our path with roses," she said, taking his hand, "for roses always have thorns." So, she thought, I know that now. But still I have chosen the roses.

She led him past the gate, and he followed. He played the flute, and she drew strength from the song.

***  
***  
***

Pamina walks with Tamino in the blue twilight. If, in the ordered perfection of the Temple gardens, she is sometimes homesick for the scattered rocks and exuberantly flowering trees of her home, she does not speak of it. And if Tamino suspects, he says nothing of it, except to touch her hand or walk a little more closely to her.

"Pamina," Tamino murmurs hesitantly, "I have been thinking."

She turns to him, questioning. He sits on one of the carved stone benches of the gardens, drawing her down beside him. 

"I thought to protect you from this, when I had this thought, and then I knew I must not." He falters for a moment, but presses on. "Your mother the Queen told me half-truths, but she never once lied to me; and she said, _By this flute you shall act with all power: the bitter will be filled with love._ And — and she gave me the flute, for your sake." He looks down, to where her fists have clenched at the mention of her mother, and looks up again at her. "What would happen if we found your mother -- if we played the flute for her? Can we do this?" 

To find the Queen, who has cast her off, because she could not murder Sarastro as her mother asked. To play the magic flute for her. She says inside her head, No. I cannot.

But if her mother came back to her?

But if she did not?

She thinks: The three boys never told me that once I chose, I would have to keep choosing.

Tamino watches her, compassion in his eyes. He will not judge her, she knows, whether she accepts or refuses. He only loves her.

Pamina sees the journey spread out before her mind's eye. Sarastro will try to dissuade them, but Tamino will overrule him. _No more. I listened not to Pamina during my trial; now you cannot separate our wills._ Sarastro will give way before him. Pamina and Tamino will pass through trials of air and earth to gain admittance to the realm where the Queen has been banished. Tamino will play the flute as Pamina sings the songs she learned from her mother, turned to gentleness rather than power. And then they will both be still and wait for the Queen's word.

Farther than that she cannot see. Perhaps, perhaps, the Queen will join their song, and they will sing together.

And perhaps not. It may be that her mother is immune to the flute's powers, or shall choose to stand against them. But what the boys told her is true, Pamina thinks. She will have love still; and she will still have herself, if her mother has moved beyond her.

And the Queen did give Tamino the flute. And sent them both to Pamina. So perhaps they will succeed.

"Yes," she says quietly to Tamino. "Yes."

Tamino takes her hands, and she smiles at him. The two of them are together, she thinks, like two melodies twining around each other, neither in the ascendant, neither subservient. 

Her mother is the shining Queen of the Night, and Sarastro is Lord of the Day. But she, and Tamino with her, will choose to be something more: Life, that finds its truth in both night and day.


End file.
